


the tremendous excitement of living

by lurkingspecter



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst and Fluff, Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, Disordered Eating, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Pining, discussion of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 16:23:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14719541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurkingspecter/pseuds/lurkingspecter
Summary: Ten years after the finale, John comes back to life. Merle isn't quite sure what to do with his old friend.





	the tremendous excitement of living

**Author's Note:**

> “I want to infect you with the tremendous excitement of living, because I believe that you have the strength to bear it.”  
> ― Tennessee Williams

 

It had been a slow evening in the celestial plane. The Raven Queen, Pan, and a few other gods were playing poker to pass the time, trading divine gossip as they did so.

Soon, the rest of the gods were out of the game, and it was just Pan and the Raven Queen left.

Pan took his time deciding on his next move. As he looked down at his cards a smile flickered over his face. The Raven Queen narrowed her eyes.

“I’d like to make this more interesting,” he said.

“Oh?”

When he glanced up from his cards there was a merry twinkle in his eyes.

“If I win, I want you to give me John’s soul.”

There was eager whispering among the assembled gods.

“Absolutely not,” The Raven Queen said. “What do you want with him, anyway?”

“I’d like to give him to my favorite cleric as a gift.”

“You’re still soft on him, huh?”

“You’re one to talk. When’s the last time you said no to one of your reapers?”

She glared at him, and then sighed and shook her head.

“Fair enough.”

He continued gazing at her over his cards with that inscrutable smile. She couldn’t tell if he was messing with her or if he really did have something up his sleeve. If he was being serious, this could end in disaster.

But the Raven Queen loved wagers just as much as her favorite bounty hunter.

“What would you give me if I won?”

“Hmm. You know how every once in a while, one of my clerics miraculously revives someone? How they sometimes bring people back even after their heart has stopped, just when you thought that you had them? Don’t you hate that ambiguity?”

She gritted her teeth. “Yes.”

“Well, maybe I’ll make that stop happening for a while. No more miraculous, improbable recoveries. You can have them.”

The Raven Queen knew how devastating that would be for him, just as he knew how devastating losing her most valuable prisoner would be for her.

She grinned.

Right now, she had a very good hand, and Pan had never beaten her before. It wouldn’t happen tonight, of all nights.

“Deal.”

They shook on it.

*

Beings across the celestial plane looked up as there was a loud crash and the sound of poker chips scattering everywhere, followed by the Raven Queen’s shout:

“Seven _fucking_ hells, Pan!”

*

Ribbons of light came down from the sky and wove themselves together into the shape of a man. The man stood stupefied for a few minutes, looking down at his hands as if they were the most surprising two objects he had ever seen, and then he muttered one word to himself. A name.

The street was empty when he came into being, but now someone was hurrying down it, head tilted forward into the wind. He grabbed them by the shoulder as they passed.

“Excuse me,” said John. “Do you happen to know someone named Merle?”

*

When Merle got home that evening he was thinking of nothing else but a long, hot soak in the bath. He stripped off his coat and scarf, sighing, relieved to be free of the bulk, then leaned down to unlace his boots.

There was a cough from within the house. His fingers paused and he frowned, peering into the dark, trying to remember what day it was. Sunday. Hekuba had the kids today, so his house should have been empty. He always left a key under the mat, though, just in case. Someone unwanted could have let themself in. Merle put a hand on the hilt of the axe hanging from his belt and walked into the living room.

There was a man sitting on his couch, facing the door as if he had been expecting him.

A man wearing a suit, a tie, and a very expensive pair of shoes.

His had fell away from his axe. He felt boneless, suddenly. A puppet with all the strings cut.

“John?”

John stood up slowly, as if afraid of frightening him. They stared at each other for a minute, each stunned into silence. John put his hands on Merle’s shoulders and looked down at him with a bewildered expression.

“You’re real.”

“What the hell, man, that’s _my_ line.”

John smiled. It was a cautious smile, edged with worry.

“Have you been doing okay?”

Merle blinked up at him. _How are you?_ he was asking, casually, as if they had crossed paths in a coffee shop instead of meeting after John had just been brought back from the dead.

He laughed wildly and John took a step back, startled.

“Shit, I guess I’m okay! I don’t know!”

Merle paced to the other side of the room and whirled around.

“You’re dead?”

It sounded like an accusation.

“Was dead.”

Merle snorted and threw himself into an armchair.

“Okay. Sure. Why not. Tell me about being dead, John, since you’re not anymore, apparently.”

John sat down opposite him.

“I was in the pool of souls. I lost myself, after a while. It felt...nice.”

Merle frowned at the wistfulness in his voice.

“You liked being dead?”

“I suppose, though there wasn’t much of me left to like it. It was peaceful there.”

“Oh.”

John realized that Merle was looking at him strangely, and he cleared his throat.

“I’m glad to see you now, though. We have a lot to catch up on.”

“Yeah.”

There was a strained silence. Merle was having trouble keeping the conversation up when he still hadn’t accepted that John was actually sitting in front of him.

“So, uh, related question: what’s it like to be alive?”

John chuckled.

“Tiring. I was about to doze off when I heard the door open.”

Merle glanced at the clock. It was late and he wasn’t getting any less tongue tied.

“Maybe you should get some sleep, then. I have a guest room.”

John took the hint.

“Thank you. I think we’ll both be better equipped to deal with this after we’ve had some rest, anyway.”

Merle nodded, relieved that he felt the same way. He showed him to the room, pointed out where the toiletries were, and backed out.

“I’ll be in the master bedroom at the end of the hall. Yell if you need anything.”

John was unlacing his shoes already, and there was a heaviness in his limbs that hadn’t been there before. Merle realized that he had been making a concentrated effort to stay awake during their conversation.

“I will.”

Merle closed the door and breathed a sigh of relief. He stood there for a minute and listened. Maybe John wasn’t actually in there. Maybe he had hallucinated the whole thing—but no. He heard two soft thuds as a pair of shoes fell to the floor, the creak of bedsprings, and a click as the lamp was turned off. Then, silence.

When he checked thirty minutes later, John was fast asleep. He stood there for a minute, watching his face in the moonlight. Tears came to his eyes. He couldn’t tell what emotion they came from. Whatever the opposite of grief was, he supposed. He wiped them away with the back of his hand and crept back to his own room.

*

When he was sure that John was asleep for good, he summoned Pan.

A warm, flower-scented breeze blew through the air, and his god stood before him.

“Good evening, Merle.”

“Hey, buddy. I’ve got an emergency.”

“What is it, dear?”

“John just dropped out of the sky. Do you know why that is?”

Pan’s smiled.

“Oh, did he find you already? Good.”

“Good?”

“I won him in a poker game and decided to give him to you.”

Merle nodded slowly as he digested each part of this sentence.

“Well...uh...thanks, but you could’ve told me that you were gonna do this first.”

Pan frowned.

“Don’t you want him?”

Merle shifted uncomfortably.

“I—I guess.”

Pan sat down next to Merle on the bed and took his hand.

“You missed him. You’ve done a good job hiding it from everyone else, but I know that you were sad for a long time. I’m always with you, Merle. I can’t help but notice these things.”

“I _was_ really sad, Pan, but the thing is, this year I felt like I had finally gotten over him.”

“Oh,” said Pan.

Merle took a deep breath. He could feel tears welling up in his eyes again.

“This was horrible timing, wasn’t it? Oh hell, Merle, I’m so sorry, I was only trying to—"

Merle brushed the tears away angrily.

“No, I’m glad he’s alive again, because the way he died always seemed wrong to me, but I felt like I had finally settled in, you know? I thought: finally, I’m moving on. And then, out of nowhere”—he gestured to the bedroom at the other end of the hall—“this happens.”

“I’m sorry.”

Merle squeezed his hand.

“You don’t gotta keep apologizing. You were just trying to help.”

“Thank you.”

“What am I supposed to do with him, though?”

Pan stood up and patted Merle’s shoulder.

“You’ll think of something,” he said, and disappeared in a shower of rose petals.

Merle sighed, and went to find a broom to sweep them up with.

*

John slept in late the next morning, so late that Merle kept checking on him to make sure he hadn’t died again. Eventually he emerged from the bedroom yawning, stretching, joints popping. He still had on his slacks and collared shirt (now thoroughly rumpled) but had taken the rest of his outfit off. His socks were brown. Merle had expected them to be black. He didn’t know why this bothered him.

Merle leaned against the kitchen counter and smirked.

“Good morning, sleeping beauty.”

“Morning,” John mumbled, rubbing his eyes.

“You hungry?”

“No.”

John’s stomach growled. Merle raised his eyebrows and John smiled sheepishly.

“I stand corrected.”

“Let’s start you off with something easy. How about soup?”

“Sounds good.”

John stood next to him while he made the soup. Merle resisted the urge to make him lean down so he could smooth out a piece of his hair that was sticking up.

Merle put the bowl of soup in front of John. He looked at it like it was something that might attack him. His stomach growled again, and he grimaced, then spooned some of the soup into his mouth. He swallowed, and a look of relief crossed his face before he continued eating.

“What’d you think it was gonna do, strangle you?”

John looked embarrassed.

“I wasn’t sure what it was going to be like. I haven’t eaten in, uh, several million years.”

“Not counting the planes.”

John laughed.

“No, not counting those.”

Merle’s smile faded as he watched him eat.

“Uh, yeah, speaking of all those planes: we cut the bonds like you told me to and killed the Hunger. It’s been dead for a long time now and people have gotten out from under its shadow, for the most part, but I have no idea how people will react to you. The ten-year anniversary is coming up soon. It’s probably best if you lie low for now.”

John looked tired, suddenly. He put his spoon down.

“That was one of the first things I noticed, when I came back. I can’t feel it anymore, but the lack has a shape. It’s like a phantom limb. I can feel this...this huge void, dragging me down like dead weight. I was connected to it for millions of years, and now it’s just...gone.”

Merle didn’t know what to say to that.

“But yes, like you said, it’s probably best if I don’t show my face.” John stood up, leaving the rest of his soup unfinished. “I’m going to wash up now, I think.”

“Oh, your first shower in a zillion years. Don’t let the cold water spook you.”

John flashed him a brief smile before disappearing into the guest room.

A phantom limb, huh.

Merle squeezed the fist of his soulwood arm.

He knew a thing or two about that.

*

After asking around, Merle managed to find a place where he could stow John away.

Hekuba had an old family home, a remote cottage that they had gone to for their honeymoon and never used again—he remembered a week of boring days out in the country with no one else in sight and nothing to do. The Roughridge uncle that owned it had been responsible for tending to the Pan temple nearby, a temple that by this time had fallen into disrepair and was no longer in use. He had died recently, so Merle could go there under the pretense of inspecting the old temple to see if it was worth restoring.

John agreed that this plan seemed good enough, and after Merle made excuses to anyone that may have checked in on him soon, they set off in a hired carriage. Merle pulled the slats over the carriage windows closed, leaving only thin cracks to look out of. He told John to do the same.

“Do people generally know my face?” he asked.

“Not your average person, but some people are sort of, uh, nerds about what went down. Like, they’ve read through Lucretia’s memoirs and everything. I gave a brief description of you in there so it’s possible that someone could piece things together and recognize you. People aren’t out, like, burning effigies of you if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“That’s...good to know, I guess.”

John watched as the scenery outside went by, turning from busy city streets to open countryside. They passed a few miles in silence, John absorbed in watching, Merle half dozing off. Eventually John got tired of that and shut the window.

“Do you have any idea how I got out of the astral plane?”

“Yeah. Pan decided to, uh, gift you to me.”

“You asked him to do that?”

“Er...no. It was kind of a surprise.”

John expression dimmed.

“I see.”

He fiddled with the buttons on the coat Merle had given him—a coat that swamped him because it had belonged to Magnus.

Merle floundered.

“I don’t mind, of course, it’s just—it’s been a lot to get used to.”

John gave him a reassuring smile.

“I understand. I don’t know what I would have done in your place.”

John spent the rest of the journey sleeping. Coming back from the dead was exhausting, apparently. Or maybe John just naturally slept a lot.

It occurred to Merle that despite everything, he and John didn’t really know each other. They only knew the big things—their ideals, their core values. The deep shit, but not the real shit. He had no idea what John’s favorite color was, what music he liked, or where he was from. Usually people started with the small things and worked their way up, but they had started from the wrong end.

“Hey John?”

John’s eyes opened.

“Hmm?”

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Black.”

Merle snorted.

“Figures.”

“Let me guess—yours is green?”

“Damn, I guess we’re both predictable.”

John smiled, turned over, and went back to sleep.

*

The carriage left them in a small village, the last stop at the end of the road. A path led from the village onto an open area covered with rolling hills. John trudged after Merle, silent, contemplative, only pausing occasionally to pick burrs off his pants. Merle chatted to fill the silence, telling him about all the local flora, once stopping to pick a purple flower and twirl it between his fingers, inviting John to look at its stippled pattern. John took it and tucked it into his lapel gently, as if afraid of crushing it.

It was the middle of spring and although the sun shone full on the valley, the wind was cold and dry, and by the time that they got to the cottage their hands were red and chapped.

A low fence surrounded the cottage, separating it from the rest of the valley. There had been a garden around it once, but it had gone wild and now the entrance to the cottage was choked by a tangle of climbing roses. Their scent was overpowering. John covered his nose while Merle whispered to the vines, coaxing them into moving aside.

The inside of the cottage was dusty, but otherwise well-kept. At the end the old man hadn’t had much to do besides clean up, Merle guessed. Beyond the cottage the land became rougher, and he had been too weak to climb up the steep, rocky path to the temple.

Merle put down his pack and went around the house turning on each lamp, trying to spread light into every moldy corner. It was twilight, and anyway the cracks of sunlight through the vines would have hardly been enough to see by in daylight. He made a mental note to negotiate with the rest of the vines in the morning.

When he returned to the main room he found John squatting in front of a low bookcase, wiping the dusty covers with the grubby sleeve of Magnus’s coat. They were related to cleric stuff, mostly. Books on plants and Panite lore. A few history books. He tucked a history book into one of the coat’s huge pockets and stood up.

“Well, what do you think of the place?” said Merle.

“It’s nice. Maybe a little cramped.”

John’s head was only a foot away from the ceiling. Merle got the sense that the dwarf architect had realized halfway through the drafting process that taller races might visit occasionally, and thrown in a few extra feet as an afterthought.

“You’ll get used to it. Just be careful around the doorways, yeah?”

John glanced up at the ceiling, rubbing his head. “I’m suddenly grateful to be living with a cleric.”

“I’d prefer it if you avoided cracking your head open on a doorframe, though. That’d be stupid way to go after all this.”

“Yeah. The way I went out the first time was so dramatic. I’d hate to spoil that.”

“Exactly. That’d be tragic.”

Merle lifted his bag up again.

“Ready to unpack?”

John nodded, grabbed his own bag, and followed him to the room. He began unpacking, but paused when he realized that Merle was just watching him.

“Where’s your room?”

“This cottage was designed for a hermit to live in, so there’s only one bedroom. I can sleep on the couch.”

John frowned, glancing between the bed and Merle.

“It’s a double bed.”

“I can see that.”

“Merle, we’ve seen each other die. I think that we’ve moved beyond any need for modesty. I don’t mind sleeping next to you.”

“Buddy, I’ve lived way rougher than this. Sleeping on a couch for a few weeks isn’t going to kill me.”

John looked even more disappointed.

“You’re only staying a few weeks?”

Merle shrugged.

“Yeah. I’ve got stuff to get back to.”

John ran a hand through his hair.

“Right. Shit. I can’t just suddenly displace you like that. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. Believe me, if I could be in two places at once, I would.”

Merle opened the door.

“I’m gonna go set up camp in the living room while you do your thing in here. Meet me for dinner in five?”

“Yeah, sure.”

*

As Merle lay on the couch that night he thought about John’s offer. He thought about John laying in the dark alone, also thinking about it. There seemed to be a silent tension in the sliver of darkness inside John’s half-open door. Merle gazed at it a while, uneasy, half hoping that he would see John’s face in it again, beckoning him inside.

The truth was, he wasn’t sure that he could lay next to John without wrapping his arms around him and never letting go.

*

John slept forever, again. This time, Merle shook him awake.

“You feelin’ okay?”

“I’m fine, just tired, still.”

He did look a bit off, though Merle wasn’t sure in what way.

“I’ll let you sleep a bit longer, then.”

Merle went out and explored the garden while he slept. It really was a mess; local plants had invaded the yard and become tangled up with the non-native species his former uncle-in-law had brought in. Trees in need of pruning sagged. He did manage to convince the vines to move away from the windows, though, so that was a good start.

An hour later, he realized that John wasn’t going to move unless he made him.

“All right Mr. Hunger, it’s feeding time, you’ve gotta get up.”

John groaned, rolled over, and pulled the covers up over his head.

Merle put his hands on his hips.

“Fine, do what you want. I guess I’m gonna have to eat these pancakes all by myself.”

A few minutes later John emerged from the bedroom with a sheepish look on his face.

“Sorry about that.”

“Don’t worry about it. Eat up.”

John still looked suspicious as he ate. He chewed and swallowed with oddly precise movements, as if he wasn’t sure of the right rhythm.

“What’s on the agenda for today?”

“Cleaning house. You up for it?”

John nodded, swallowing the last bite of pancake.

Merle handed him a broom.

“Let’s get to it, then.”

*

They spent the first couple days cleaning up and poking around the house to see what the old man had left behind. Not much, it seemed. He had led a minimalist lifestyle.

They sent off for some clothes for John. Merle asked him if he wanted more suits, only partially joking, and John laughed and told him that he didn’t have anything to dress up for, anymore. He bought sweaters and khaki pants. College professor chic, Merle called it. John had become oddly attached to Magnus’s coat, though. He wore it draped over his shoulders like a blanket as he followed Merle around, which Merle found cute for some reason—he did insist on washing it, though. Thoroughly. Dog hair had even gotten into the pockets of the thing.

John was strangely quiet. Merle had expected him to be chatty, probably because he had been so eager to spin out pretty phrases during their parleys. It was like his willingness to speak had dried up along with his energy. Sometimes Merle caught him staring out of a window with an intense, concentrated expression, like he was thinking about something heavy. Whatever it was, he didn’t want to talk about it. Whenever Merle asked him what was on his mind he would shake his head, smile, and change the subject. He would share when he was ready, Merle supposed.

After they had finished with the house and Merle made a few efforts at taming the garden (this was mostly futile; the old man must have done something to piss the plants off, because he swore that they occasionally tried to trip him), Merle began going up to the temple each day. Although he was mainly using the temple as their cover, he was curious about it. According to some sources, it was the oldest church of Pan in Faerûn. He invited John to go up with him, but he declined, still complaining of exhaustion.

The temple was made of stone and had a rough-hewn look about it, like it had been assembled with primitive construction equipment. A labor not of skill but of love.

Inside, the plants had started to take their land back. The statue of Pan at the front was covered in moss, and a bird had made a nest in his outstretched hands.

Looking around the place, Merle thought that it actually looked better in ruin than it would look if restored. The vines creeping across the roof and the mice living in the walls felt natural.

He would have liked to have John there, but it was nice to sit alone in the front row and let his mind become still. It was dark and cool and slightly damp inside, but in an earthy, pleasant way. He always felt refreshed after he left.

After a few weeks, after he felt that John had settled in, he went away. John still seemed lethargic, but he wasn’t sick. He could take care of himself. Merle was sure that he just needed time to warm up to the whole idea of being alive again.

Everyone appeared to buy it when he told them that he had spent his weeks away surveying the land. He checked on his earldom, took a few pupils adventuring, got in some time with his kids and his friends, and then slipped back to John’s hideaway.

*

Merle wasn’t sure what he expected to return to. John roaming the countryside. John with a pile of finished books. John content after taking up some harmless hobby, like knitting.

Instead, he returned to find John’s quietness even more deeply entrenched.

It was late afternoon. John had invited him into the kitchen after welcoming him back.

The clock ticked above the sink. There were two soft plunks as John dropped sugar cubes into his tea, followed by the rattle of the spoon while he stirred. John looked out the window while he waited for the tea to cool. Steam rose into the air, illuminated by the sunlight from the window, sunlight so thick that it seemed like you could touch it.

John had that inward-gazing look about him that meant he had settled into the silence, and wouldn’t break it.

Merle cleared his throat.

“What’ve you been up to out here?”

John took a sip of his tea.

“I’m not sure.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve just been doing, I don’t know, this and that. Nothing important.”

Merle focused on him more closely. On his hands. They were trembling. They were also noticeably thinner than before.

“Have you been eating?”

John set the teacup down. He smiled but it didn’t hide the alarm rising in his eyes.

“Of course I have. I’d be starving if I didn’t eat for two weeks.”

“You know what I mean.”

John ran his finger around the rim of his cup and bit his lip.

“Did you ever go out and buy more food?”

“No, I, uh. I made what you left me with last.”

Merle had left him with enough food for a few days.

He put his head in his hands.

“John, you...you get why you can’t do that, right?”

“I don’t see why not,” John said, his voice becoming slightly higher. “I look fine, don’t I?”

“That’s the thing, John: you really, really don’t.”

Merle looked up. John was staring out the window again, one clenched fist on the table, the line of his jaw tense and tight. Merle extended his hand. The tips of his fingers lightly touched John’s fist.

“Please tell me what’s wrong.”

“I’m tired,” John said. “I’m so damn tired, Merle.”

“Can I help you not feel tired?”

John shook his head.

“No. I think that we just need to give it time.”

So Merle gave him time.

*

As a cleric, Merle knew that the phrase “time heals all wounds” was mostly bullshit. Sometimes all time does is give wounds a chance to fester. Time helped, but it would do nothing if you left the wounds undressed.

So far, it looked like time was only making things worse for John.

He hardly left the house and when he did it was only to wander aimlessly around the garden or stare out over the plains. He read a few pages of each book in the house but couldn’t commit to any of them. He cleaned up around the house, because he seemed to feel guilty about this listlessness, but that was about it.

Merle didn’t know what to do.

He kept waiting.

*

After another month, when he had gone away and come back again, he decided that it was time to nudge things along.

John was in his usual position, sitting in a chair in the corner of the living room, Magnus’s coat draped over his shoulders, staring out the window. Merle sat down next to him.

“I don’t think you’re just tired, John.”

John shrugged.

“I’m not gonna stop pestering you until you tell me what’s wrong. I’ve been waiting for you to say something for long enough.”

John glanced at him, saw the stubborn set of his face, and sighed.

“Okay.”

He took a minute to gather his thoughts.

“The truth is, I don’t see the point of getting out of bed anymore. For millions of years the Hunger was my purpose, but now I don’t have that. I feel utterly lost.”

“To stop feeling depressed, you’d need the Hunger back.”

“Yes.”

“I can’t do that for you, obviously.”

“I know. I failed, Merle. I’m not going to get a second chance to do what I did. I’ve accepted that.”

“What happens now, then?”

John looked away from Merle, down at his clasped hands.

“Now, I wait to die.”

Merle stood up.

“No. Fuck that. You weren’t given a second chance just to waste it like this.”

John stood up too.

“I didn’t ask for this second chance. I was fine with being dead! I—I was happy. I had finally found some measure of peace there. I am so, so grateful that you took me in, but this isn’t what I want. I just want to rest. I’m not worth the effort. You can’t save me.”

“Unfortunately for you, I’m stubborn as hell.” Merle stepped toward the door. “Follow me.”

“Where?”

“We’re getting you out of this damn house. I should’ve never let you stay cramped up in here.”

When John didn’t move Merle grabbed him and hauled him through the door. He let out a yelp of surprise but didn’t protest, and when Merle let go of him to open the gate he followed, massaging the hand that Merle had yanked and muttering complaints to himself.

They set off across the grass, toward the rocky hills, toward the temple.

There wasn’t a path. In fact, it looked as if it had been designed specifically with goats in mind, not people. Maybe that was fitting. Maybe Pan enjoyed hopping up the hills on his faun legs. Merle, however, found it to be a pain in the ass, and John doubly so.

Halfway up the largest hill, the one with the temple at its crest, Merle looked back to find John bent over, hands on his knees, panting.

“I can’t do this, Merle.”

“Come on, John, we’ve made it this far. It doesn’t get any worse, I promise.”

John sat down on a rock and waved him on.

“No, you go ahead.”

Merle climbed back down, hooked his hands under John’s arms, and attempted to haul him up the hill.

“Merle, what in the hell—”

He squirmed out of Merle’s grasp and pushed him away, not hard, but enough to make him stumble.

John straightened his jacket, his mouth a thin line. He let out a long, angry breath through his nose.

“Don’t do that again. If I want your help, I’ll ask for it. I’m going back.”

Without another word, he turned and began carefully retreading their steps.

Merle watched him leave, muttered “whatever,” and continued climbing.

Inside the temple, he asked Pan to please, for the love of all that was good and fucking holy, give this fool some hope.

*

On the way back he kept an eye out for John-shaped objects in the crevices between rocks. It occurred to him now that leaving his fatigued and possibly death-seeking friend to wander down a treacherous path by himself had maybe not been the safest idea.

He must not have had too much trouble, though, because Merle found him waiting in the living room, whole and alive and not a scratch on him. Merle sat down in the chair across from him.

They regarded each other with some embarrassment.

“I’m sorry for manhandling you,” said Merle.

“I’m sorry for—well, I’m sorry for a lot of things, but right now I’m sorry for being, just, completely uncooperative.”

“Are you sure that there’s nothing I can do to help?”

“You’ve given me a safe space to live out the rest of my days. That’s more than I was expecting and probably more than I deserve. You don’t need to do anything else. I just...I don’t want you to worry about me, Merle.”

“It scares me when you talk like that. I can’t help but worry.”

John put his head in his hands.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”

Merle walked over to him and opened his arms. John looked up and blinked at him for a moment, unable to comprehend what he wanted. Then he nodded. Merle put his arms around him and John returned the embrace automatically, effortlessly.

The last time that they had embraced like this, John had been dying.

Merle wasn’t going to lose him to darkness again, metaphorical or otherwise.

“I’m here if you need to talk, okay?”

“Okay.”

There was the slightest bit of hesitation in his voice, as if he really was giving in, if only a little. Merle sighed in relief and let him go.

*

After that John tried to make a bit more of an effort to get better. He got outside more, and he tried to read the books Merle had bought for him while he was away, ones that Merle thought might interest him more. Merle started to feel hopeful. Maybe all he had needed was some outside encouragement.

In less than a week this relative fervor of activity died down and he was back to how he was before.

Merle had known other people who were depressed. He knew that there were ups and downs. It was unreasonable to expect John to feel better right away. He had never been quite this close to it before, though. He’d never been able to see the day-to-day listlessness, the way that it could completely sap someone’s energy and made them almost insensible.

It was hard to think that things could change when for every up day there were six down days.

Eventually, he had to leave again. He left John with a stone of farspeech this time, though, so at least he could check in with him every once in a while.

“Are you gonna be okay here by yourself?” he said as he was preparing to leave.

“Yeah.”

Merle cleared his throat, embarrassed, not sure if it was okay to ask what he needed to ask.

“You’re not gonna—?” He waved a hand. “You know.”

“No,” John said, quickly. “No, I wouldn’t do that to you, Merle.”

“Okay. Just, uh—just wanted to check. Take care of yourself, okay?”

John gave him a brittle smile.

“I’ll try.”

*

For the second time that year, Merle found someone waiting in his living room when he went home.

Lucretia was reading a book and had helped herself to some tea from his pantry.

“Hi, Merle,” she said, flipping a page idly.

He dropped one of his bags. She looked up when she heard the crash, frowning, but he quickly recovered.

“It’s good to see ya, Lucy, but what’s the occasion?”

“You invited me over, remember?”

Merle counted off the days on his hands.

“Shit. Sorry, I completely forgot. I’ve been busy.”

She waved him off.

“Don’t worry about it. Up at the temple again?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t you get lonely out there?”

Merle had been tugging his jacket off as she said this, but now he paused, searching her face. Her expression hadn’t changed.

“Nah. I’ve got Pan.”

“Praying doesn’t count. You’re not turning into a hermit on us, are you?”

“Don’t worry. There’s a village nearby and I go down to the tavern occasionally. I have a few beers and chat with people, that sort of thing.”

“Hm. Well. I was going to offer to go out there with you, if you want me to. I’m curious about those old monuments.”

Merle smiled, trying to hide his panic.

“That’s real good of you, but don’t bother. I like the solitude, y’know? Helps me get in touch with my inner, uh, my inner plant.”

Lucretia laughed.

“Your inner plant?”

“Oh yeah. I’ve really got something going with the vines out there.”

“Merle.”

“Really getting in _touch_ with the flora, if you know what I mean.”

Lucretia groaned.

“God, nevermind, I won’t go near your weird plant sex dungeon.”

Merle chuckled, and she rolled her eyes.

“ _Anyway_. Let’s see if we can find literally anything else to talk about.”

*

They made dinner together, and after dinner they sat in front of the fire sipping a hot drink that Lup had sent with Lucretia. It was some sort of thick, spicy concoction with hints of cinnamon and vanilla, picked up from one of the worlds the IPRE had visited. Over these past ten years Taako and Lup had been slowly reconstructing the recipes they had learned during those lost years, and all of their kitchens benefited from the results.

While Lucretia had been putting the drinks together Merle had slipped away to talk to John on his stone. He said he was doing fine, but it was hard to tell without looking at his face.

“Something’s on your mind, Merle,” Lucretia said.

“I’m just sleepy. This spice doesn’t have quite enough kick to it to keep me awake.”

Lucretia took a sip of her drink and gave him the Madame Director look that she reserved for special occasions. He smiled back at her.

“You know that doesn’t work on me anymore.”

She sighed. “Can you at least give me a half-lie?”

Merle’s hand dipped into his pocket and he felt the smooth texture of the stone, a reassurance and a burden at the same time.

“There is something I wanna ask, maybe, but I’m not sure if I should.”

He thought about John’s black-rimmed eyes. He thought about John thinking about all those years he had left to live, years that he probably didn’t think were worth living through. His fingers on the stone became sweaty.

“What do you do when you’re afraid a friend is going to hurt themself?”

Lucretia’s fingers tapped the dense ceramic. “That’s...a heavy one.”

“Yeah. That’s why I didn’t wanna ask it.”

“I’m glad you did, though.” She took a long sip of the drink, licked her lips, and set it down. “I guess the main thing to remember is that this is outside of your control. All you can do is offer to help, and if they don’t let you help then that isn’t your fault.”

“I’ve tried to tell myself that, but it doesn’t make it any less frustrating. There has to be something I can do.”

Lucretia shrugged. “Sometimes there isn’t. Sometimes you just have to wait and see what happens, and be prepared to help if things go south.”

Merle’s stomach clenched.

“Go south?”

She winced. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have put it like that. I’m guess what I’m saying is, you can’t stop them, but you can be there to listen when they need it.”

“Right,” he said, weakly.

She leaned forward, studying his face.

“This isn’t someone I know, is it?”

“Nah. Just a guy I met out there near the temple.”

“One of your tavern friends.”

“Yeah. No one important.”

“You must be somewhat close if they told you that.”

“It’s the beard.”

“Beard?”

“People think I know wise shit because I have a white beard and I’m a cleric. It’s a pain in the ass.”

She looked like she didn’t quite believe him, but she gave him a small, worried smile and let him change the subject.

They didn’t bring his mysterious friend up again, but throughout the evening she cast him long, searching looks. He wasn’t too worried about that, though. She was a busy woman. She would forget about it soon.

*

Merle could hardly stand to be with John. He could hardly stand to be away.

He started going to the temple just to be away from him for a bit. Every once in a while Pan would check in on him and ask how his friend was doing, and all Merle could do was shake his head and sigh.

Pan seemed confident that he would come around eventually. Merle pointed out that, since he was an immortal being, he probably had a very different concept of _eventually_. Pan wasn’t sure what to say to that.

He began spending more and more time with John, and when he was with the others he became more withdrawn. He tried not to let his anxiety show, but it was hard, and he was too busy worrying to notice if the others were suspicious or not.

Which was why he was surprised when, four months after John came back to life, he found Lucretia waiting for him in his temple.

It had been an average day. He got up, tried to make John eat something, pretended to be busy while he watched John aimlessly wander the house like a ghost, then got frustrated and strode off across the fields.

The door was open. That wasn’t unusual; nature had already crept in through the cracks, so he didn’t see the use in trying to block it with a door, and usually left it ajar.

He took a few confident, careless steps into the building, and froze.

Someone was standing at the front of the church, hands clasped behind their back, looking up at the statue of Pan.

They seemed to be waiting for him to say something.

“Hello?”

The figure turned, and a shaft of light from one of the high windows caught their face.

Lucretia.

“Hi, Merle,” she said, and nodded toward the pews. “Let’s talk.”

Merle’s heart pounded as he crossed the room. Maybe she hadn’t seen John. Maybe she had just come up here for a visit and skipped straight to the temple, for some reason.

They sat. He looked up into her troubled eyes.

“Shit,” he said.

She gave him a tight smile.

“You had to know that I would find out eventually. How long have you been hiding him?”

“About four months. Pan brought him back to life for me. It was supposed to be a gift, or something.”

“That’s a strange gift.”

“Eh. You know how gods are.”

Merle fidgeted with one of the leaves on his wooden arm, trying to hide the fear coursing through his body. Had she brought anyone with her? Were they at the house now, taking John away? If he ran, she would probably catch him. She was still handy with shield magic.

Lucretia watched his fidgeting. Trying to fool her was useless; her presence here was proof of that. He got up and paced across the room, turning his back to her. Footsteps followed. A hand rested on his shoulder and tentatively turned him around.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

All the excuses that Merle had come up with during the past four months crumbled at once.

“Because I love him.”

He dragged a hand across his eyes.

Lucretia’s voice softened. “Oh, Merle.”

She knelt down and put her arms around him, pulling him into a tentative hug.

“Are you crying?”

Merle sniffed.

“No.”

She laughed gently. Merle leaned his head against her shoulder.

“You really missed him, huh?”

“I don’t know. I stopped thinking about him after a while. It’s like...the thoughts were still there but they only came up every once in a while, you know? Like something would remind me of him and I’d stop what I was doing and I’d think: oh, right. He’s dead. How did I forget that he’s dead? And then it’d hurt just like before.”

“I think I know what you mean. It’s like you get so used to thinking of them as alive that some part of your brain thinks that they’re out in the world still doing their own thing, only away from you, out of sight.” She hesitated. “I had a similar thought with Lup. She was always so vibrant, so full of energy. It was hard to believe that anything could kill her. I thought that she was going to suddenly reappear and kick my ass at any minute.”

Merle laughed, and it was a full-throated, relieved laughed.

“It feels good to get that off my chest, even if you are gonna—you’re—” his throat constricted, choking off his words, and his fingers tightened around the back of her jacket. “Fuck, oh fuck—are you—”

“I never said that I was going to do anything to him.”

He breathed out.

“Oh,” was all he could say.

She patiently unhooked his fingers from her jacket and stood up.

“I haven’t made up my mind yet. There are too many factors.”

“Such as?”

“Justice. While I personally may not feel vengeful toward him anymore, not everyone will feel that way. The Hunger didn’t hit this plane as hard as it hit many, but a lot of people still died. He’s responsible for those deaths. Some may not feel that it’s right for him to live while their friends are dead. At the very least, they’ll want him imprisoned.”

“They don’t need to know, then. Let me keep him here.”

“That’s not all. I also feel like he could be dangerous. What’s to stop him from trying to create the Hunger again?”

“You haven’t observed him too closely, have you?”

“No. I got close enough to confirm that it was him, but after that I stayed back.”

Merle gave her a sad smile. “Trust me, he isn’t dangerous.”

“You’re too biased to decide that.”

“No, it’s like…you’ll just have to talk to him to see what I mean. I’d almost prefer it if he was dangerous, to tell the truth.”

She frowned. “You’d prefer it if he was a world-destroying monstrosity?”

“Well, when you put it like that it sounds bad. Seriously, though, you need to meet him.”

“Today?”

He shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”

“I figured that you would want time to prepare him. That seems only fair.”

“Believe me, it wouldn’t help.”

She searched his face, head tilted slightly in confusion.

“If you say so.”

*

They found John on the couch where Merle had left him.

He had expected surprise, or something, but instead John looked resigned, and maybe a little relieved.

“You’ve come to take me away, I suppose.”

Lucretia glanced at Merle. This wasn’t the response she had been expecting either.

“No, not yet.”

Her eyes flickered over John, taking in his gaunt face, his wrinkled clothing, the dullness of his expression.

“Do you want me to?”

“I don’t really care either way.”

“I see. Merle, can you step outside with me for a minute?”

“Yeah.”

Lucretia relaxed when they stepped back out into the bright air and shut John’s aura of misery behind the door.

“I think I get what you mean.”

“Yeah. He ain’t a world-destroyer anymore. I could barely get him to eat two bites of toast this morning.”

“This does answer one of my questions, at least.”

“So…?”

“So I’ll think about it some more. We’ve got time before anyone else notices. I’ll cover for you, and tell the others that you’re fine out here on your own. They were starting to get suspicious too.”

“Thanks. I know that you hate lying, after everything that happened.”

“I do, but...I saw the way you looked at him.”

Heat spread up from his neck.

“Is it that obvious?”

She smiled.

“It is if you know what to look for. Does he know?”

“I doubt it. He’s too wrapped up in his own problems to notice anything.”

“You’re not sure if he loves you back, then.”

She said it cautiously, as if just saying it might cut him. He felt a familiar sensation in his stomach, as if it was sinking and floating at the same time, a feeling that he had been trying to avoid confronting for months. He licked his lips.

“I don’t know. Sometimes it doesn’t seem like he’s interested in connecting with me at all. That might just be the depression, but maybe he really doesn’t feel the same way.”

Lucretia looked back at the door and narrowed her eyes.

“That’s a problem.”

Merle shrugged.

“Life’s tough like that sometimes. You can’t make people love you.”

“Hm.” Lucretia turned from the door abruptly. “I’ll stop by again soon.”

“How soon?”

“I’m not sure. I’d like to talk to you more, and I also need to lay eyes on him again.”

The hardness drained out of her eyes and she put a hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t give up, okay? You’re not alone now. You can talk to me about this whenever you need to. Keeping something like this to yourself will suck the life out of you if you let it. I should know.”

He nodded, and realized that she was right. Over the past few months he had felt like he was suffocating, but now it was like the weight pressing down on him had eased up a bit.

“I’ll remember that.”

“Good. Give John my regards.”

She set off down the hill, in the direction of town.

Inside, John made room on the couch and Merle sat down next to him.

“Looks like your time ain’t up just yet.”

“That’s great,” John said, without any enthusiasm whatsoever.

“She also said to give you her regards. Whatever that means.”

“Sounds...vaguely threatening.”

There was a brief flash of amusement in his eyes that made Merle smile.

“Yeah, maybe. She’s not too pleased about this whole situation.”

“It could go either way, then?”

“I’ll be able to win her over. Probably.”

John tucked the jacket more tightly around himself and gazed out the window, down the hill in the direction that she had left from. Her jacket was a bright spot of blue in a sea of green.

“We’ll just have to wait and see, I guess.”

Merle didn’t like his tone at all. It had too much of the wrong sort of hope.

“Yeah. I guess so.”

*

She came back a week later and the three of them had tea. John made it while she and Merle sat at the table, and she watched his every move, seemingly fascinated by the way he poured hot water into their cups. He brought them over to the table and frowned when he noticed her stare.

“Sorry,” she said. “It’s just odd to see you doing something so human.”

He shrugged and plopped a few sugar cubes into his tea.

“I seem to have lost my appetite for world-eating, unfortunately.”

“Well, tea tastes better, I’d assume.”

He paused with the cup halfway to his mouth, frowning.

“All that dirt,” she explained. “Sounds nasty.”

The corners of his mouth twitched.

“You’re probably right. Not sure how I tolerated it.”

Lucretia bit her lip, also resisting the urge to smile, and drank her tea.

When they were done he went back to the couch and his jacket. She and Merle remained at the table, talking in low voices, watching him.

“I once saw Magnus carry two puppies through the snow in that jacket,” she said.

“Yeah. It took us three washes to get all the fur out. I don’t know why he’s so attached to the thing.”

“Magnus’s left it at all our houses by this point. It’s absorbed a lot of good memories, I bet.”

“True.” Merle grinned. “I wonder what Magnus would say if he knew the Hunger’s adopted his jacket.”

“I don’t think he’d be a fan.”

“He’d probably have to fight him to get it back.”

Lucretia snorted. “Here lies John, slain in battle over a crusty old jacket.”

Despite their lowered voices John heard his name and sat up, peering over the edge of the couch.

They fell silent. Lucretia stood up.

“Why don’t you show me the temple? I was too preoccupied to get a good look at it last time.”

Merle agreed, and they left John to find a better place to talk.

*

An hour later, they were strolling along the right aisle of the church. Along the walls were illustrations of stories from Panite lore. Merle explained them to her as they walked. She had heard most of them before, but it was comforting to hear them again in his low, gravelly voice. As he described Pan’s exploits his tone was reverent but also vaguely teasing, as if he was talking about some troublemaker friend and not a god.

“The Pan on every plane is just a little different,” he said. He ran his fingers over the ridges of a frieze where Pan capered along a mountainside, playing his pipes. “I might like this one more than the one I was raised with, to tell the truth.”

Lucretia waited for him to elaborate on that. He didn’t. They were silent for a while as they admired the engravings.

“John isn’t comatose, at least,” Lucretia said eventually.

“Yeah. He still does his laundry and shit because he doesn’t want to be a ‘burden’ or whatever.” Merle kicked a loose stone and it pinged off the altar. “I want him to get out and live his life, but he won’t. In some ways, he’s acting like he’s already dead. I feel like I’m living with a zombie sometimes.”

“I wish I knew how to help.”

“Me too.”

Lucretia watched a second stone bounce off the altar.

“It would probably help if he wasn’t stuck out here in the middle of nowhere,” she said. “I mean, there isn’t really much to do.”

“I know. I was so scared of losing him again that I got paranoid, I guess.”

“Well, your instinct was right, I think. These ten years have softened all of us but I’m not sure how the others would react.”

“You reacted pretty well, at least.”

She laughed.

“You didn’t see me the first time I peeked in your window and saw him. I nearly had a heart attack. It took me weeks to decide what to do.”

“And you’re still not sure what to do with him.”

“Right. I’ve decided that he’s not a threat, but as far as my other concerns go, I’m not sure. I feel like it isn’t my place to make this decision.”

“Then whose place is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“I guess our hands are tied, then. Nothin’ we can do about it. We’ll just have to let it be.”

He turned from the frieze and continued walking down the aisle.

“Merle,” she said. “You know that this is going to have to be a group decision, eventually. He hurt all of us.”

His stopped. His fists tightened in frustration, soulwood creaking.

“I know,” he said, voice as brittle as she had ever heard it. “But I’d like to keep pretending that it’s all gonna be okay while I can. Can you let me have that? Can you let me hold onto hope like a damn fool for as long as we can keep this up?”

He stood glaring down at the floor, back stiff with defiance. She sighed.

“I know that you’re not going to listen to me, but he isn’t worth it, Merle. At the end of it all, you might just get your heart broken. I don’t want that to happen to you.”

When he looked back, she was surprised to find him smiling.

“Ain’t that always the risk with love, Luce? I’m an old hand at this. Don’t you worry about me.”

She mirrored his smile tentatively.

“If you say so.”

“I know so,” he said. “I’ll be okay.”

If his voice wavered a bit, she was generous enough to not point it out.

*

Usually, Lucretia didn’t have much to say to John when she visited. She looked at him like he was a puzzle, like she was trying to figure out where his edges fit into their world.

One day, she stopped by shortly after Merle had left for the temple. John opened the door at her knock and looked out at her, blinking against the sunlight.

“Merle isn’t here.”

“I know.”

He frowned.

“I need to talk to you,” she explained. “Alone. Walk with me.”

He reluctantly slipped on a pair of shoes and followed her outside.

It was a bright day out, with the wind blowing hot gusts of air across the grass, making it ripple in waves around them. Lucretia didn’t slow her pace for him, as Merle would. For someone who was physically a decade older than him, she was surprisingly spry. They stopped at the top of a hill, one of the taller ones, one where they could see in all directions around. She sat in the grass and patted the space next to her. He sat, imitating her cross-legged posture.

She picked a flowering weed and held it between two fingers, twirling it.

“How much did Merle tell you about our time on the Starblaster?”

“Not much. I know some things about the crew because I watched you, occasionally.”

“The scouts.”

“Right.”

She picked another flower. The stem broke with a satisfying snap.

“I tried to kill myself during the Stolen Century, once.”

He swallowed, but didn’t say anything, waiting for her to continue. She continued collecting flowers, not meeting his eye.

“I wasn’t the only one. A few of us tried it. Sometimes it was because it was a bad cycle, sometimes we just felt worn down by the years. When you’ve been on the run for several decades, and it doesn’t look like you’re making any progress, and your enemy refuses to back down...well, it starts to seem like you may as well give up.”

His eyes stayed trained on her hands. She was weaving the stems together now, making something.

“But none of us ever tried it a second time. Do you know why?”

He shook his head.

“Because we missed out on life. Because that was a whole year, gone, forever. We may have been immortal, but we knew that our luck was going to run out eventually. It made us realize that every second is valuable. It made us realize that our time to be with the people we love is limited.

“You, however, have no reset button. This is it. If you kill yourself, you’ll never see Merle again.” She glanced up from her busy hands. “Unless, of course, that doesn’t bother you.”

He licked his lips. “I—I do like being around him.”

“But his company isn’t enough incentive to stay, is it?”

He said nothing. She looked back at the flowers, shaking her head.

“If you can’t do it for yourself, then please try to do it for him. I’m not sure I’ll ever believe that you could deserve Merle, but...I think you could become the type of person that makes him happy, if you tried. And right now, John? You aren’t trying at all. I need you to do that.”

Again, he said nothing. She looked up once more, furrowing her brow.

“You do know that he’s miserable, right?”

John blinked.

“He is?”

“What, did you think that being around you when you’re like this is _fun_?”

“But he—he seems so upbeat all the time. I thought that he was just taking this all in stride and being, you know, zen about it, or something.”

“Yeah, Merle is like that, and most of the time it’s genuine, but sometimes he acts like that even when he’s hurt. It can be hard to tell the difference if you haven’t been around him that long.”

“I guess I don’t know him as well as I thought I did.”

“Maybe not.”

Lucretia continued working with the flowers. John stared up at the fast-moving clouds above them, trying to think back over his months with Merle and pick out moments where he had been sad and not said anything.

After a while Lucretia stood up, stretching. There was a fully formed flower crown in her hands.

“Let’s see if Merle’s back.”

They met him on the path back to the cottage. He looked up at them with a mixture of confusion and relief.

“I was just about to head out and see where you’d gotten to.”

“You weren’t around when I got here, so John and I decided to go on a walk.”

She raised her eyebrows at John, expecting confirmation. He nodded.

Merle smiled. “That’s good. I’m glad you’re gettin’ along, at last.”

Inside, Lucretia placed the flower crown on Merle’s head, and they both laughed. For the first time that day, John saw genuine happiness in her expression, and he couldn’t help but chuckle too.

They exchanged a look over Merle’s head as he adjusted the flowers.

Even if they had nothing else in common, they shared this: they never wanted Merle to stop laughing like that.

*

That evening, John and Merle stood in silence as they washed dishes after dinner. John’s frown of concentration seemed even more troubled than usual. He stood running his soapy rag clockwise around a plate for a minute before Merle gently pried it from his hands to rinse it.

“Got somethin’ on your mind? Besides the usual, I mean.”

“Yeah,” said John, reaching for another plate. “I’m trying to decide if I should tell you something. You keep asking me about before, when I was human, and I keep putting it off, but...maybe I shouldn’t.”

Merle bit back his usual response of _but you are human_. They had confirmed that John was physiologically the same as anyone else, but John still didn’t seem able to make the mental shift from thinking of himself as a monster to thinking of himself as human. Merle had given up on trying to convince him otherwise, by this point.

“You should,” he said. “I know remembering that stuff might be painful for you, but I think it’d do you a lot of good.”

John shook his head. “No, it’s not that. I’ve accepted what happened. I just—I’m afraid of what you’ll think of me. I wasn’t a good person, Merle.”

Merle snorted. “No shit, universe-eater.”

“I’m talking about before that part.” John let out a frustrated breath. “At first I was just trying to convince everyone that I was right, but there came a point where I realized what would happen if I kept going. It would have been easy to stop. But I didn’t. I wish I could tell you that the Hunger was spontaneous, but it wasn’t. I knew what I was doing.

“I assumed that I knew what was best for everyone, and that was selfish. I was so convinced that I was right that I wouldn’t listen to anyone who opposed me. I shut everyone out.” His eyes found Merle’s, and his voice softened. “But I’d like to listen now, if you’ll let me. I want to be convinced. I want to believe that it’s possible to live while knowing that all of this will fade, in the end.”

“That’s a tall order.”

“I know.”

Merle studied John’s face. He remembered one of the first words that had come to mind when he met him: slick. Self-satisfied and secure in the knowledge that everything was going his way. There was none of that smugness now.

“Okay,” he said, nodding. “Okay. I’ll try.”

“You’re not mad about before? About what I did?”

"Nah. That wasn’t nearly as bad as I was expecting."

John stared at him. "What?"

“I thought you were about to tell me that you ritually sacrificed people to make the Hunger, or something."

“At least I didn’t fall that low,” John said drily.

“Really, though, I’m not sure if that’s all that worse,” Merle said, then added, mocking John’s voice, “ _In the grand scheme of things._ ”

“I don’t sound like that much of a tool, do I?”

“Don’t worry. It’s endearing.”

John rolled his eyes and picked up a bundle of spoons.

“If you say so,” he muttered, but he ducked his head as he scrubbed, hiding a smile.

*

The next day, John finally agreed to go up to the temple with him. They did it at John’s pace this time. Not eating properly had sapped his strength more than Merle had realized, and they had to rest frequently, sitting down on rocks and sipping from the large canteens of water Merle had filled before they left. Their slow pace gave John time to take it all in. When they stopped for lunch he leaned against a sun-warmed boulder, eyes sweeping the landscape, looking more alert than he had in weeks.

He squinted up at the sky, shielding his face against the light with his hand, and pointed to two birds circling above them.

“What are those?”

“Vultures.”

“I thought vultures were supposed to be ugly. They look beautiful, riding those high winds like that.”

“I dunno, John. You’re kinda like a vulture.”

“Beautiful at a distance and ugly up close?”

“No, no. Dark and mysterious at a distance, and just kind of an annoying asshole up close.”

“Thanks. That’s _so_ much better.”

Merle laughed, then looked away, clearing his throat.

“Also you’re, uh, you’re not bad looking. Up close. Um. Just in case you were wondering. I don’t need you developing body image issues on top of everything else.”

John gave him a smile that made his stomach flip.

“Trust me, Merle. I need no help in that department.”

“Gods, nevermind. Vain bastard.”

John chuckled, and Merle had to resist the urge to tug him down by his shirt front and kiss him right there.

They got to the temple in the middle of the afternoon. John immediately had to collapse on a seat and rest his legs, but in short time he got up and began exploring.

He wandered behind the pulpit at the front and Merle felt a chill as he looked up at him, imagining what it would be like to hear him speak from one of those, wondering if he had in fact ever done it in a church. They locked eyes and he saw that John was thinking something similar. He brushed a hand across the top of the pulpit, his expression wavering between longing and guilt, and stepped down onto the floor again.

“Did you ever have a religion?” Merle asked.

“I was never part of a specific one. The gods on my world took a more hands-off approach than the ones here, and there were debates over whether they actually existed, but I believed in them. I needed someone to blame for everything, someone to be angry at. Mostly, I hated them.”

“Hmm. Fair enough.”

John raised his eyebrows. Merle shrugged.

“They’re assholes, sometimes.”

“Should you be saying that in a temple?”

“Eh. Probably not.”

John grinned, and there was a mischievous sparkle in his eyes that Merle had never seen before.

“Well, at least we’ll get smitten together.”

“I think it’s ‘smote’.”

“I suppose you would know all about that, being a cleric.”

“Mhmm, but of course. Seen more’n a few people get smoten in my time.”

Merle nodded wisely, stroking his beard, and John cackled. The sound echoed around the church, magnifying it, and he clapped a hand over his mouth, embarrassed.

“Don’t do that. You’ve got a great laugh.”

“A great laugh _and_ a great face?”

“Yep. You’re gonna be dangerous to someone out there.”

John gave him a curious look. Merle felt heat rise in his face. He glanced through the open door and saw that the sun was descending already.

“Anyway, we need to get going if we’re gonna make it back before dark. You ready?”

John nodded.

As the sun went down light seeped across the landscape, deepening the shadows, turning all green things golden. When they got to the top of a tall hill John stopped suddenly, noticing the color. For a minute, it looked as if he had forgotten how to breathe.

“Oh,” he said, letting the breath out in a quiet rush.

They stood there until the sun died down to a red ember on the horizon. Merle watched John, watched how his coat billowed behind him, how his hands hung by his sides, slack with surprise, how he breathed deeply, slowly, as if trying to inhale the image with the air.

They moved on without a word, and after that Merle thought that John’s steps were stronger, more purposeful.

*

That was one of the good days. Things didn’t change immediately after that, but there was a shift, however slight.

John collected golden moments. He started recording them in a journal, with an analytical, almost obsessive precision. On his worst days he pulled the journal out and ran a finger over the words, trying to remember why, for a brief moment, he had thought something was worth sticking around for.

After a while, he let Merle look at it too.

*

_We went further than ever before today. Merle took me to the forest at the edge of the hills. Funny how I hadn’t noticed it before. I never thought to look that far._

_I don’t know the names of the trees but they had this rough, knobby bark, slick with green moss. It was medicinally important moss, apparently. Merle scraped some into a jar and took it home with us. How long has he been going to this forest, and bringing back this moss, while I was too wrapped up in my own problems to notice?_

_The forest had this sort of damp silence, like the thick moss deadened sound. It was eerie, almost, like something out of a fairy tale. Merle wasn’t bothered by that, of course. He just kept walking forward confidently, like he was following some path I couldn’t see._

_We were about thirty minutes in when I saw it: a luna moth, clinging to a dead tree that was black with rot. Its green wings seemed to glow against the fungus. I stopped to look at it. We had a similar moth on my home planet_ — _I still can’t remember what it was called and at this point I don’t think I ever will_ — _and I had always found them beautiful, though I had never seen one in the wild. Merle stopped with me and told me its name._

_Then he whispered something, a word that sounded like cool night wind hissing through dry leaves. The moth’s antennae twitched. Merle said the word again. It waved its wings in acknowledgement, and then took a graceful dive off of the tree and onto Merle outstretched fingers. He looked at me with that peculiar twinkle in his eyes, that look that he gets when he’s about to do something that completely perplexes me._

_He lifted his hand. I lifted mine. He placed his fingers against mine and the moth shifted its legs obligingly, until they were all on my side of the bridge. Merle removed his fingers gently, one by one, to avoid startling it._

_Its fluffy white body was soft against my skin and its large black eyes looked up at me with something like intelligence. I ran the index finger of my other hand over its leaf-shaped antenna and it shifted, adjusting the position of its furry legs on my finger, but didn’t stir._

_A creature has never touched me in such a patient, gentle way._

_I looked at Merle, who was smiling as he watched me, and my heart felt so full of gratitude that tears came to my eyes._

_I haven’t felt capable of crying in a long, long time. Merle calls that progress. Maybe he’s right._

_(I didn’t, though. Maybe someday.)_

*

John’s journal was filled with those sorts of praises.

_I felt so grateful toward Merle._

_I was so happy when Merle did this for me._

_Merle always makes me laugh._

And, eventually: _I used to wish that I had never met up with Merle, that I had left town and walked straight into the sea before he saw me, but I’m glad that I didn’t. Living with him is the best thing that ever happened to me. I don’t know what I would do without his kindness, his generosity_ , _and yes, even his stubbornness._

_I never want to leave his side._

But love was never mentioned once in the journal, toward Merle or anyone else. He didn’t know what to make of that. He lay awake at night, thinking of John’s words, trying to find something in them that confirmed that his feelings weren’t one-sided.

He never said anything. Rejection seemed ten times as bad as never knowing how John felt.

Thankfully, action on his part turned out to be unnecessary.

One evening they were eating dinner, fried rice mixed with chicken and vegetables. Merle picked at his food moodily. He had read another one of John’s entries beforehand and this one had contained a particularly potent blend of mixed signals. Usually he could push his feelings aside, but right now he wasn’t in the mood to pretend that everything between them was okay.

“Merle.”

“What?” Merle said, looking up, his voice curter than he meant it to be.

“You’ve got something on your face. Hold still.”

John leaned across the table and picked a piece of rice out of Merle’s beard, and when John’s fingers brushed across his face he froze. John, oblivious to the effect that he was having on Merle, popped the rice into his mouth.

Merle blushed. John stared at him across the table, his finger still in his mouth.

“I’m...in love with you?” he said.

The startled expression on his face, as if Merle had just pulled off some sort of magic trick, made him burst into laughter. He buried his head in his arms, shaking with it.

John watched him wheeze, even more bewildered than before.

“Um,” he said. “Are you okay?”

Merle wiped tears of laughter from his eyes. “I love you too, you old fool. Took you long enough.”

An awful realization appeared to strike John.

“Wait. How long have you been in love with me?”

“The whole damn time, my man.”

John put his head in his hands.

“Oh my god. The journals. All those entries where I said things like…” John let out a groan of horror. “You must have thought I was leading you on. Merle, why didn’t you _say_ something?”

Merle shrugged. “I’m scared of rejection, just like anyone else.”

John’s hands slid off of his face. “You, scared of rejection?”

“I can’t be blasé about everything, Johnny boy.”

“Right. Sorry.”

Merle shrugged. “I figured that if you felt the same way you’d let something slip eventually, but the signs you were giving me were, uh, less than clear.”

John studied Merle’s face, as if seeing it in a whole new light. He got that look about him often, these days. As his depression abated somewhat his naturally high curiosity, beaten down by hopelessness for so long, was returning. Being the subject of that clear-eyed scrutiny made Merle’s skin tingle.

“I’ve also felt this way the whole time, I think,” he said. “But I was too scared to admit it to myself. I didn’t want one more thing tying me to this place. Now, though, I do want to be tied here—tied to you.”

John slid his hand across the table, palm upturned, and Merle took it. John closed his eyes, sighing.

“Touch is good. I’d forgotten that.”

Merle licked his lips, thinking of all the ways he had wanted to touch John over those long months of yearning.

“So...how much touch are you comfortable with, exactly?”

John opened his eyes and smiled at him, that same mischievous smile he had given him when they were blaspheming in the temple.

“I’m not sure. I guess you’ll have to come over here and help me figure that out.”

Since John was sitting, that about evened out their height. John leaned down and placed his hand under Merle’s chin, tilting it up. Merle put his hands on John’s shoulders to steady himself, leaned in, and—he hummed a laugh against John’s lips. Soy sauce hadn’t been a main feature in any of his fantasies, but it was still perfect.

They broke apart, both grinning like fools, and then did it again.

*

The next morning Merle sent a quick prayer to Pan, thanking him for making that old hermit buy a double bed.

*

It was a few months later.

Merle began gradually spending more time away from John, confident that he could take care of himself for a while. When he showed back up John would have a fresh batch if memories to show him, and he took to reading them aloud in that honeyed voice of his, strong and unwavering yet tender. Merle thought of that voice often while he was away, and it was the anticipation of hearing it that set him walking a bit more quickly than necessary up the path to their cottage on this particular day.

At the front of the cottage John worked on a tangle of rose bushes with a pair of clippers, his sleeves rolled up, thick worn gloves on his hands, sweat glistening on the back of his neck. He was getting enough to eat now, for the most part, and gradually getting back to his former weight.

Merle stood at the garden gate for a while, admiring the way that John’s back muscles flexed under his snug shirt. John looked over the roses with a discerning eye, then shifted the branches carefully, making sure to avoid thorns, and pruned a piece near the top.

“Hello, Merle,” he said, stooping down to snip another section.

By way of greeting Merle walked up behind him, put his hands on his hips, and pressed his nose to his back, inhaling the sharp, bitter tang of sweat. It smelled electrifying on him.

John set the shears down and shucked off the gloves.

“Well? What do you think of my work?”

“Looks great,” Merle mumbled against the fabric of his shirt.

John laughed and lifted Merle up. He carried him to a clear section of the wall and pressed him to it, pinning him with a deep kiss. His hand began questing over Merle pants, searching for the buckle, and Merle had to pull back.

“Here?”

“There isn’t another house for miles and I haven’t seen you in weeks. Please.”

There was a roughness to his voice that made Merle reflexively squeeze his waist with his legs. He went for another kiss and let John continue fumbling with his belt.

“ _Ahem_ ,” said a voice behind them.

Merle opened his eyes and saw Lucretia standing several feet away, arms crossed, eyebrows raised. A basket hung from the crook of her elbow.

John glanced back and gave her a scowl. “We’re a bit busy right now.”

“I can see that.”

With a sigh, John let Merle drop to the ground, and Merle quickly rearranged his belt.

“When did you get here?” Merle asked.

“I got to town shortly after you did. I was walking up the path behind you, actually, but you were too busy ogling him to notice.”

John raked a hand through his hair and huffed with annoyance.

“Are you here for any important reason, or can you leave us be for a while?”

“I’d say your fate is pretty important.”

Merle swallowed nervously. “You’ve finally come to a decision?”

She nodded. All annoyance faded from John’s face. He took Merle’s hand and looked at her with calm determination, ready to accept whatever verdict she had brought them.

“The multiverse has moved on from you, John,” she said. “And I intend to make sure that it stays that way. I don’t see the point in dredging up old pains now, after we’ve made so much progress. It would probably do more harm than good. Therefore, I agree with Merle that we should keep you a secret from the world at large.” She held up a finger. “But, I think that the rest of the seven need to hear about this. They’ll find out eventually, anyway, no matter how hard we work to hide you. I’ll give you a month prepare, and after that, I want you to arrange a meeting with them.”

Merle locked eyes with John. He squeezed his hand.

“If you run, I won’t stop them from hunting you down,” she added, softly. “I’ll advocate for you to the best of my ability, but other than that there’s not much I can do.”

John shook his head. “I won’t run.”

“John—” Merle said.

“I won’t. Whatever they decide to do with me, I can face it.” John knelt down and put his hands on Merle’s shoulders. “No matter what, the time that we spent here together was worth it.”

Merle hesitated, fighting the urge to insist that they run right now, immediately.

“It was,” he said, finally. “It really was.”

Lucretia shifted her weight, seeming unsure of what to say, then hefted the basket in her arms.

“I brought bread and a new batch of jam that Lup’s been testing.” She took a jar out, which was filled with a red substance flecked with gold, and waved it at them temptingly. “I’ll share if you take me to that secret spot you keep hinting at.”

“Sure,” John said, and he stood up, his hand caressing the side of Merle’s face as he did so.

The land was John’s as much as it was Merle’s now. When they left the garden, he led the way.

*

In the forest John and Merle had found a spot where several huge trees leaned toward each other, meeting in the middle and twisting in an impossible configuration to form a plateau large enough for a few people to stand on.

(They usually came here to make out. Lucretia didn’t need to know that, though.)

“How?” she asked.

“Magic,” was all Merle could say.

Using the rivets in the trees’ distorted forms as footholds, they climbed to the top and sat in a circle, eating the bread and jam in silence. When Lucretia was finished she leaned back, hands splayed out on the bark, the wind ruffling her white hair as she stared up at the cloud-streaked sky. John watched her thoughtfully as he ate. He was in the mood to talk to her alone, Merle could tell. Lucretia often pushed him further than Merle was willing to, and sometimes he needed that.

He dusted the crumbs off his lap and slid down one of the trunks to the floor below. He wandered off, lost in thoughts about the future, but stayed close enough to hear their voices. They started up soon enough. The words weren’t clear, but the well-meaning snark was. Merle shook his head, smiling, and walked off further.

It was likely that the others wouldn’t take this well. John seemed determined to take whatever they threw at him, but Merle wasn’t going to settle for that. He was already thinking of plans involving shields and making a list of healing spells that he would prepare, just in case. Hell, he would even resort to persuasion magic if he had to. It wouldn’t be too hard to find someone willing to cast an enchantment for him. Or...no, he wouldn’t do that. He needed to stop distrusting his friends.

Merle walked faster and faster as thoughts spun around his head, until he found himself at the edge of the forest, slightly out of breath.

_Damn,_ he thought, looking around himself. So much for staying within earshot.

And then, the view over the hills made him pause.

The sky was covered end to end in altocumulus clouds. They were bunched together in wave formations and had been turned pink and violet-edged because of the sinking sun. He had heard this called a mackerel sky, once, because the clouds looked like scales on a fish.

It was a dramatic sky. A baroque sky. The kind of sky that John would put in his memory book.

Merle’s gaze swept across it. For a moment, he forgot about John and Lucretia and let awe overtake him.

It had been worth all of it, all the years of grief and heartbreak, just to show John that things like this existed.

And he was certain, suddenly. They were going to be okay. As long as they had things like this, they would be strong enough to face whatever was coming.

Merle ran off into the woods to show his friends what he had found.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm @lurkingspecter on tumblr. Come talk to me about gay eldritch horror men.


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